A Lesson In Tolerance
by Leaving-My-Mark
Summary: Takes place between episodes 315 and 316. Toph has a chat with Suki that changes her attitude towards the Kyoshi Warrior. Told from Toph's POV. No Suki bashing. Toph and Suki friendship. Please comment if you choose to read!


**A Lesson in Tolerance**

Ever since he came back from that prison he has been doting over her. He'll often show little public displays of affection towards her: hugs, kisses, compliments... the whole nine yards.

Yeah, I know what you must be thinking: Toph's blind, why should she care? How does she know? Well, my special way of 'sight' alerts me of everything—a person's approach, their heart rate, how they're feeling according to that heart rate, etc.; you name it and I can probably sense it.

Sometimes I'll be walking by them while they're alone and they'll be kissing. At those moments, I try to make distance between me and them as soon as absolutely possible.

Yeah, I know that he's had a girlfriend since before he even met me, but I don't care; and I can't help it if I have feelings for the guy.

Speaking of Sokka and relationships, Katara had once told me that he's had _two_ serious relationships. Unfortunately, the first one didn't last very long. The first girl had turned into some moon spirit or something like that. Apparently, the subject and the person are one of Sokka's sensitive spots.

And Suki, well…Sokka had almost lost Suki, too. She'd been locked away in the Boiling Rock ever since she had lost a fight against Azula during the time that Appa was missing. That was where she had just escaped from: the Boiling Rock.

And not only did Sokka get Suki back, but he got his dad back, too.

Hakoda was a nice guy, I guess. However, I haven't known him long enough to figure him out completely and decide if I like the guy or not.

Sokka and I have barely hung out since Suki joined our little group. He's been spending almost ever minute of every day with Suki. I found myself spending more time practicing my Earthbending and hanging out with some of the other people in the group like Haru, Teo, and the Duke, who seems to like me a lot.

We don't have nearly as much fun as me and Sokka used to, though. I miss hanging out with him. I wish he wasn't spending so much time with Suki. It's like he's completely forgotten that I'm here.

I miss the days where we'd devise and pull pranks on an unsuspecting Katara and sometimes Aang, too. I also miss teasing Sokka. I don't get to do nearly as much of that as I used to since he's not really around me as much as before.

It was around noon. I could tell what time it was by the intensity of the sun and where it was hitting my face. We'd just finished eating our lunches, cooked by Katara as always, and now everyone was heading off to do their own thing. Katara and Aang were going off to practice their bending; Haru, Teo, and the Duke were off into the temple the moment Katara dismissed them all; and Hakoda and Chit Sang—another addition to our group that Sokka and Zuko brought back from their trip to the high-security prison— were just chatting.

I thought that Sokka and Suki would go off to do their own thing as custom, but when Suki stopped and refused to go with Sokka as he yanked her forward to another section of the temple, I had a feeling that that might not happen. I could tell that something was bothering Suki, and her reluctance made Sokka a bit nervous.

I could just barely hear Suki as she said, "Sokka, hold up a second."

"What is it?" Sokka asked anxiously.

I heard Suki say that she didn't want to hanging out with him for the day, and she suggested that he and Zuko practice sparring, instead. I couldn't hear what she said afterwards, though, because she had lowered her voice so much that I couldn't hear.

I could tell that Sokka was taken by surprise at this. I was a bit shocked, as well. I wondered why she wouldn't want to be with Sokka like she was almost every other day, and I knew that Sokka was probably thinking the same thing.

"Um…okay…if that's what you want, Suki," Sokka said hesitantly and awkwardly.

"Thanks, Sokka." I 'saw' her lean forward, her weight on her toes, and give Sokka a quick kiss. I winced.

"Have fun with Zuko." Sokka nodded. She then pushed him in the direction of Sparky, who was heading off to his normal training spot.

Sokka stumbled, then ran to catch up with Zuko, making me and Suki the only ones in the area.

I felt Suki turn and head towards me. Immediately I was suspicious and curious. _What could she possibly want with me? _I pondered.

I sat on the floor of the temple with a large rock in my hands, bending it into different shapes as I waited for her to reach me and pretending as if I hadn't overheard their conversation and as if I didn't know that she was on her way over to me for whatever reason it might be.

"Hey, Toph, can I talk to you?" She asked from behind me once she'd reached me.

"Why?" I asked coolly as I continued to bend the rock in my hands. Why should I waste my time talking with _her?_

"Because I can tell something is wrong. I just want to know what's bothering you and to see if I can help."

"Nothing's bothering me…and even if something was I wouldn't go to you for help," I snapped back in reply. I smashed the rock between my hands into crumbling dust which escaped from between my fingers and sprinkled onto the floor.

"Toph, you don't need to be shy about your feelings around me… I can help, you know," Suki insisted. I 'saw' her reach forward to put a hand on my shoulder and I immediately stopped her by Earthbending a wall in front of her. Suki's hand quickly retreated and she took a step back.

"Save the mushy, touchy-feely, compassionate crap for your _boyfriend_," I told her harshly.

"I had a feeling that that was what you were upset about."

She'd hit the rock over the head, that was for sure. But, being Toph, I refused to admit that she was right, and so I denied it.

"I told you, I'm not upset about _anything_. Now leave me alone before I earthbend you to the North Pole," I warned her irritably.

"I bet if it were Katara standing here trying to talk to you, you wouldn't be so against it…" she said quietly.

"Why would Katara be any different, huh?"

"Because you actually get along with Katara. I can tell you don't like me, Toph. And you don't like me because I'm spending so much time with Sokka and you feel like I took your best friend away from you," Suki answered.

"That's a lie," I blurted out at once. I knew it wasn't, but I refused to let Suki know the truth.

"I don't think it is."

I folded my arms and gave a small 'humph'.

She took that as a confirmation. "Toph, I'm really sorry that you feel that way. But really, I didn't do it on purpose. I didn't purposely try to take Sokka away from you, honestly," Suki told me.

I gave an indignant snort. I wanted to say that she was wrong, that I knew she was lying, but the truth was…she wasn't.

"Sokka said you can tell when someone is lying…well, am I?" Suki asked.

"When did he mention that?" I questioned, not bothering to answer her question. I was curious now. The anger was slowly fading away into suspicion and curiosity again.

"I don't know exactly when, but during one of the first few days I was here," she informed me.

"We were in his room and he was talking about what had happened between when I'd last seen him—which was when we had crossed the Serpent's Pass—and when we met up again at the Boiling Rock.

"He told me that you guys had bumped into some guy named Jet in Ba Sing Se, and how Katara had at first been skeptical of him because he'd betrayed the group's trust before. But you were able to tell that he wasn't lying. And then you guys realized that he had been brainwashed and brought him back to your apartment to try to get him to remember everything that had happened to him and figure out who did it.

"He talks about you a lot, actually," Suki admitted softly, as if the fact that he liked to talk so much about his best friend hurt her deeply.

"He does?" I asked, surprised by this new bit of information.

I was tempted to withdraw my rocky shield that had stopped her moments earlier from laying her hand on my shoulder, but I stopped myself.

"Yeah. He talks about how you guys are always spending time together and playing tricks on the rest of the gang. He mentioned this one time where you scammed a bunch of people in the Fire Nation out of their money. He said that Katara was furious about it."

I allowed myself to laugh, remembering that memory very well. "Yeah, I remember that. I scammed them good!"

Suki chuckled at that. "I bet. The people must have been furious when they found out you tricked them out of their money." She sounded a little happier and her voice lightened from that thick, low, serious, and saddened tone to one more cheerful. I suspected that if I could see her expression, she'd be smiling.

At that moment I decided to lower the wall of rock that was separating us and I turned to face her.

"Oh, yeah!" I confirmed enthusiastically with a nod of my head and a prideful smirk on my face as I recalled the moment when Sokka told me about the wanted poster he'd found with me on it and my cool new nickname.

"Did he ever tell you about the time we were all bored and had nothing to do, and so he suggested that we all try to mimic one another's bending?" I asked. That had been one very amusing day.

Suki shook her head. "No, he didn't."

"Oh, well this one you ought to get a kick out of!" I told her excitedly. "You see, the Meathead tried Earthbending, but he was horrible at it. And then he made us all try using his boomerang—partially because he wanted to feel like he was contributing to the game, and partially because he wanted to show how awesome boomerangs were and to prove how good he was at using one and that it was a 'difficult weapon to master.'"

Suki gave a hard, loud laugh at that. "That sounds exactly like something Sokka would do. It must have been a riot!"

It was definitely Sokka-ish and just another one of Sokka's lousy attempts to appear macho and superior.

"How'd everyone do with the boomerang?" she questioned as she took a seat on the dusty temple floor in front of me.

"Twinkletoes was okay at it. The boomerang at least managed to get close to hitting the trunk of a tree about fifty feet away and come back in his general direction. But Katara was awful. She managed to throw it _into_ the tree that Aang had almost hit and he had to climb up and pluck it out of the branches," I told her with a chuckle. "All I'm saying is that Sweetness had better stick to bending."

"How'd you do?"

"I didn't even give it an effort. As soon as Snoozles gave me the boomerang I chucked it at him and it hit him square in the head." He had then proceeded to complain about how his forehead hurt and scold me about how he hadn't given me the boomerang to hit him in the head and that what I did wasn't how to properly use a boomerang. I had simply told him that I didn't care and that I'd use it any way I wanted.

"Aww, poor Sokka," she said with a small laugh; feeling sorry for Sokka because it must have hurt but also finding it humorous.

I shrugged. I didn't have much sympathy for the complaining, meat-eating, sarcastic Sokka. About 90% of the time he got hurt he deserved it.

I found myself talking with Suki for the rest of the day. We mainly talked about funny things that Sokka had done because there were just so many stories to share, but we talked about some other things too.

One of the stories that I got the biggest kick out of was the one where she'd first met Sokka. That was the time he had learned that girls could kick butt, too. In fact, according to Suki, he'd asked her to teach him the ways of the Kyoshi Warriors after getting his butt whooped by Suki herself in front of the other warriors. She'd agreed, but being a Kyoshi Warrior meant that he had to follow every single tradition, which included dressing like them. It was one of those 'I wish I was there and wasn't blind' moments.

Suki wasn't a bad person. We didn't have too much in common, but she was tolerable. She reminded me of Katara in some ways. She was more into fashions and looking nice and didn't like the dirt and the earth quite as much as I did, and she didn't act as tough as a turtle-rhino like me. In fact, when one first met Suki they would probably think of her as a weak, delicate female. But the truth was that she and I both were strong, independent girls.

I think our biggest connection was Sokka. We both cared for him (even though one's affection was more obvious than the other's) and we both enjoyed teaching Sokka a lesson about girl-power, as well as laughing about all the times he'd been a meathead and teasing him.

"You know, you're not so bad, Fanny," I conceded with a smile.

"You're not so bad yourself, Toph," she replied. I could hear the grin in her voice as she spoke.

I reached forward and gave her a good, hard punch in the arm, grinning as I did so.

"Ow," she muttered, rubbing the spot on her arm which would most likely turn into a bruise later on. "What was that for?"

"It's just my own way of saying I accept ya', Fanny."

"And the nickname?"

"It's all part of the welcome package, honey. You're gonna have to get used to it. And don't worry; I'm sure to come up with a better one soon – this one is only temporary."

"Oh," she said, catching onto my unique ways of acceptance. "Thanks," she added.

**XXX**

About an hour later Sokka and Zuko walked back to the main camp, where we were, to find the two of us chatting and laughing. Immediately, Sokka was suspicious.

"Okay, what's going on?" He asked.

"Nothing, Sokka. Toph and I are just talking," Suki assured him.

Sokka was baffled, to say the least. Suki and I talking? Chatting? Being _friendly_ and getting along with one another? It wasn't something he had expected to see for a _long_ time. After all, I had made no attempts to hide my spiteful feelings towards Suki ever since she'd arrived at the Western Air Temple.

"But you—I thought—" He sputtered, pointing at me and then at Suki. "I thought that you—Wha--?"

Suki and I simply laughed at him.

"How did your sparring session with Zuko go?" Suki asked, changing the subject for Sokka's sake.

"You should have seen me, Suki! I was all over the place and I beat Zuko to a pulp! I warned him that I was good, but he didn't believe me. But I proved him wrong! Nobody can beat… _The Sokka_!" He started detailing the whole day with Suki listening intently and getting some amusement out of Sokka's theatrical presentation and the excitement in his voice.

Meanwhile, I was rolling my eyes while Sparky attempted to interject on several occasions and give his side of the story, but Sokka refused to shut his mouth and let him talk.

I'd had enough of it. Just to prove him wrong about the 'nobody can beat _The Sokka_' statement, I stomped my foot on the ground and sent Sokka flying halfway across the camp and into the fountain that was on the other side.

When Suki and Zuko both turned their heads and gawked at me (even though I couldn't see their expressions, I could tell by their posture and the vibrations that they were surprised by my bluntness and quick action), I simply smirked, shrugged, and said, "Hey, someone had to shut him up."

The two of them simply laughed and nodded in agreement.

**XXX**

**A/N: Please press the review button and send me even a quick little comment telling me your thoughts on this particular fanfic and/or constructive criticism.**

**And yes, I know that Suki's nickname is absolutely terrible, but as Toph clearly stated, it's only temporary and I'll come up with a better one soon enough. If you have any ideas for a much better nickname for Suki, please shoot me a message or leave your idea in a review and I will fix the fic, give you credit for it, and be eternally grateful!**

**Thanks everyone!**

**Tres**


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